Perth

After finishing up Kiwi Experience, I met up with my friends Kelly and Jen in Perth, the capitol of Western Australia. Just to refresh everyone’s memory, Kelly use to do gymnastics with my cousins Kendall and Bridget, and Jen was Kelly’s roommate while living in Bondi Beach. We spent the first two days exploring Perth; wandering around Murray St. Mall, walking down to Swan River, and trying desperately to find the “botanical” part of the King’s Park Botanical Garden (we never did succeed at the last one). If I were to compare Perth to an American city, I would say it reminds me of Indianapolis or Cincinnati. It’s much smaller than Sydney and Melbourne, has a modest skyline, and people seems to genuinely happy to be living there.

The only town hall that was built by convicts. I've found that Australia has a lot of buildings that were built by convicts.

St. George's Cathedral

The Bell Tower down by Swan River

A view of the city from King's Park.

For St. Patrick's Day we went on a "booze cruise" with our entire hostel. It was an unforgettable night!

The city skyline at night.

A few days in Perth and we were ready to move onto the surrounding suburbs. Our first stop was Fremantle. Lonely Planet said the Fremantle Markets are a "must- see" and although I wasn't particularly impressed with the clothing, crafts, etc. they had a great farmer's market.

The Fremantle prison

We stayed in Cottesloe Beach for a few days. It was a very beautiful and relaxed atmosphere.

Our last day in Cottesloe we made a day trip to Rottnest Island, just off the coast of Western Australia. It's called Rottnest because the Dutch explorer that discovered the island saw what he thought were enormous rats roaming around (the name literally translates to ratt's nest in dutch). They are in fact called quokkas and are apart of the marsupial family.

We rented bikes, rode around to different beaches, and spent the day sun bathing and snorkeling.

I like this picture because if you squint hard enough you can see Perth in the background (it might help if you click on the actually picture to enlarge it). Also, isn't the color of the water amazing?

We heard so many good things about the famous "Sunday Sesh" at Ocean Beach Hotel, we decided to extend our stay in Cottesloe just to partake!

We had a bus to catch bright and early Monday morning to Margaret River, but ran into many obstacles along the way. The receptionist told us the train station was just a ten minute walk from our hostel... well it turns out to be a lot longer when you're carrying over 30lbs of luggage on your back. Needing to rest and refuel, we stopped halfway at a deli. Assuming we missed the train that was supposed to take us to the bus station, we split a $35 (a lot of money to a backpacker who relies solely on public transportation!) taxi ride to the bus station missing our ride by five minutes. We had to buy new tickets and wait for four hours at the station for the next bus. Normally, I think this would have put all three of us in a foul mood, but we had so much fun recapping our previous night and laughing about what "bad" travelers we were that it was hard not to find the situation funny!

Kelly and Jen's roommate Todd was also staying in Margaret River. The four of us went on a fabulous wine tour together. We visited four vineyards, one brewery, one cheese shop, and a chocolate factory. It was a delicious day!

Margaret River, a very famous surfing beach.